Aquarium Drunkard

Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XM, channel 26 (SIRIUS), and channel 43 (XM), can now be heard twice, every Friday - Noon EST and then an encore broadcast at Midnight EST. Below is this week’s playlist.

SIRIUS 101: Jean Michel Bernard - Generique Stephane ++ Destroyer - My Favourite Year ++ St. Vincent - Actor Out of Work ++ Circulatory System - Overjoyed ++ Ruby Suns - Blue Penguin ++ Blair - Rampage ++ Foreign Born - That Old Sun ++ Dump - Raspberry Beret ++ Wilco - Car Can’t Escape ++ Dirty Projectors - Cannibal Resource ++ Local Natives - Airplanes ++ Yo La Tengo - Tom Courtenay ++ Spoon - Got Nuffin ++ Of Montreal - Moonage Daydream (David Bowie cover) ++The Flaming Lips - The Spark That Bled ++ Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele - When You Were Mine ++ Guided By Voices - Don’t Stop Now ++ Yonlu - I Know What It’s Like ++ Frankel - Anonymity Is The New Fame ++ Avi Buffalo - Summer Cum ++ The Shins - Strange Powers (Magnetic Fields cover) ++ Built To Spill - They Got Away  ++ Deerhunter - Little Kids ++ Yo La Tengo - Periodically Triple Or Double ++ Willie Williams - Armageddon Time ++ Silver Jews - Punks In The Beerlight ++ Pavement - Here (Peel Session 1) ++ Emitt Rhodes - Long Time No See ++ Heartworn Highways Dialogue - People Condemn Whiskey ++ R.E.M. - Letter Never Sent ++ Les Surfs - Tú Serás Mi Baby (Be my baby) ++ Grizzly Bear - He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss) ++ Panda Bear - Ponytail ++ Ruby Suns - Kenya Dig It  ++ Sea-Ders - Thanks A Lot ++ White Antelope - It Ain’t Me Babe

*You can listen, for free, online with the SIRIUS three day trial — just submit an email address and they will send you a password.

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When I’m asked “so, what are you listening to these days?” more often than not, the answer regularly involves some sort of compilation, sanctioned or otherwise, ranging from dancehall, dub, French pop, tropicalia, Ethiopian hybrid jazz/funk to ’60s garage-rock, freakbeat, obscure soul and weird psych comps from yesteryear.  While I will always be an admirer of the album format, these collections, in terms of gathering up the one-offs and interesting curios, consistently deliver (see labels: Soul Jazz, Numero Group, LITA, Now-Again, and countless others.)  Sure, the mass proliferation of the last decade of Internetz has made it much easier to round up such nuggets on one’s own, but a thought out, expertly curated, compilation cannot be beat.

Which brings us to….Well Hung: 20 Funk Rock Eruptions from Beneath Communist Hungary, a compilation of 1960’s Hungarian funk.  While I am sure there are experts out there who could write tomes on the minutiae of the genre/movement, it is collections such as these that round up both the heavy-hitters (Metro, Illes) with the more obscure. Dig.

Elsewhere: Visit You Ain’t No Picasso for an additional track off the comp….

Download:
MP3: Anna Adamis & Gabor Presser :: Ringsad El Magad No.2
MP3: Metro :: A Pénz
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Amazon: Well Hung: 20 Funk Rock Eruptions from Beneath Communist Hungary

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Starting with “Wilco (The Song),” which sounds like an upbeat inverse of the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Waiting for the Man,” Wilco announce their intentions quickly on Wilco (The Album).  “Do you dabble in depression?” Jeff Tweedy asks, and it’s not the question itself that’s new for Wilco—far from it—but the fact that there’s an answer that comes with it.  “Wilco will love you, baby,” he sings before hand bells ring over Nels Cline’s moaning guitars.  Put simply and quickly and reductively, Wilco (The Album) is one of the greatest breakup albums of all time, in no small part because it’s the sound of Jeff Tweedy forever divorcing himself from the darkness, paranoia, and cynicism to which he’s subjected himself since at least Summerteeth.  Ain’t no wallowing around here.

The early A.M. aside, Wilco have never been a predictable band.  While some (i.e., many) would have preferred Tweedy and his group to continue to stare into the smoke of 2001’s quietly epic Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the Chicago sextet has instead moved into a new Americana, an Americana drenched in the feedback loops of the times but increasingly optimistic that there is a light somewhere, at some point, in some sort of eventual time.  YHF is, of course, considered the group’s masterpiece and, once the decade is said and done, will assume a place very near the top of the Best Of The 00’s.  But as the group has matured and evolved, Tweedy has grown more comfortable in his faded jeans, dialing down the migraine duplicates in favor of more traditional song structures, melodies, and themes.  Wilco (The Album) continues in this trend, almost to the point of making the infamously morose singer unrecognizable.  As such, there are words all over Wilco (The Album) that seem almost out of place—words like “blessing,” “Jesus” (as in the name, not the swear word), “love,” “Dear,” and, most tellingly, “you.”  All of these are sung with varying degrees of conviction, sure, but it’s hard not to believe the bullet-taker rock of “I’ll Fight” or the fuzzy solos of the aptly-named “Sunny Feeling.”

Which isn’t to say that Wilco have gone all soft rock.  Those who lobbed the idiotic and immature “Dad Rock” label at Sky Blue Sky will be appeased by the nervy teenage guitar dreams of “Bull Black Nova,” which builds something between “Impossible Germany” and Television’s “Venus.”  “You Never Know” is simple and perfect pop rock that pokes at the aforementioned cultural catfighting. Tweedy prods at his listeners, telling them that they’re acting like children and adding later, “act your age, go back to black metal and perms.”  It’s grinny advice to not take oneself too seriously, to make room in one’s life for play.  Have some fun.

Because, really, that’s the reason that all of your favorite bands started making music, at least in the very very beginning.  Wilco (The Album) not only succeeds but stands near the top of Wilco’s extremely distinguished catalogue not because it Has Something To Say but because it’s not afraid of its own shadow.  It’s just six dudes making cool music, allowing themselves to smile and relax a bit, realizing that the obsession with the darkness isn’t some sort of special burden affixed by God to The Artist, but rather the consequence of The Artist’s obsession with himself.  “Once I thought the world was crazy / Everyone was sad and chasing / happiness and love and I was / the only one above it,” Tweedy sings in “Solitaire,” sounding something like Elliot Smith fronting The Band.  “I was cool as gasoline…It took too long to see / I was wrong to believe / In me only.”  This same theme is picked up in “You and I,” in which Tweedy duets with Feist, whose smoky vocals highlight just how lonely Jeff Tweedy—and, by extension, most contemporary indie rockers—typically sound.  Rather than wallow in the obscure anti-passions of past records, Tweedy is moving towards and becoming comfortable with the classical emotions of love, happiness, and comedy.  And here’s the truly weird part: he seems to have found something in them.

Wilco (The Album) will not win the accolades of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, because it does not speak the same language.  YHF, brilliant though it is, offers its listeners little in the way of challenges, allowing the paranoid yuppies to keep staring, keep staring, keep staring, into the mirrored windows of their tall buildings.  Wilco (The Album) refuses to settle for such mediocrities—both from itself and its audience—and is the more courageous album for it.  And if the sound of six of the world’s best musicians banging out spangled and bejeweled pop-rock doesn’t get you off, then you may want to reconsider your record collection.  words/ m. garner

Amazon: Wilco (The Album)

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Yoñlu was the recording nom de tune of 16 year-old Vinicius Gageiro Marques.  Note the use of “was” here.  His story is as interesting as it is tragic.  From his parents home in the Southwestern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, Marques, recording as Yoñlu, crafted lo-fi, tropicalia-soaked, pop and folk pieces reminiscent of José González and Nick Drake all in the fragmentary style of Damon Gough.  Delicate and, at times, dark.  A sonic example of the racing bouillabaisse that is a teenager’s mind, the songs range from the straightforward (”I Know What It’s Like“) to the schizophrenic  (”A Boy And A Tiger“) mixing gentle acoustic guitars and keys with cheap Casio beats, multiple languages (Portuguese, Spanish, English) and snippets of dialog from television shows and commercials a la Michel Gondry’ film La Science Des Rêves.

Marques took his own life in 2006.  He left his family a note with a CD-R of his music urging them to play it ‘whenever they felt sad.’  On his computer his parents found a seemingly endless trove of recorded material that their son had been sharing around the world, via the Internet, under the guise of Yoñlu.  Cryptically, one of the songs is titled “Suicide.” Awash in multiple genres the songs have been distilled and compiled on A Society In Which No Tear is Shed Is Inconceivably Mediocre released on David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label.

Download:
MP3: Yoñlu :: I Know What It’s Like
MP3: Yoñlu :: A Boy And A Tiger
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Amazon: Yoñlu - A Society In Which No Tear is Shed Is Inconceivably Mediocre

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Off The Record is a recurring feature here on the Drunkard that marries two of my greatest interests; music and travel. Having a locals perspective when visiting a new locale is the difference between experiencing it through the lens of a tourist and of that of a native.

Off The Record gathers some of my favorite artists, asks them to reflect on their city of residence, and choose a handful of places they could not live without — be them bookstores, bars, restaurants or vistas.

Thus far we’ve seen NC related entries in the Off The Record series from the Bowerbirds (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) and Benji Hughes (Charlotte), but a city that is often overlooked despite its historical significance (Battle of Guilford Courthouse; Woolworth Sit-Ins) is Greensboro. Located in the state’s Triad region, Greensboro has created its own musical identity despite often residing in the shadow of Chapel Hill.

Below, Chris Jackson and Diego Diaz of Citified take us through some of the best spots to catch some of the character of Greensboro’s music scene and the pulse of the city. These aren’t your conventional tourist spots, but the places sometimes off the beaten path. Citified just recently released their third EP, Absence, on the Eskimo Kiss record label. It’s another excellent release of shoegaze and jangle-pop inspired rock that is their most satisfying and diverse album yet.

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College Hill Sundries: Located 2 blocks from the campus of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, College Hill is Greensboro’s quintessential neighborhood dive bar. Notorious for being one of the smokiest bars in Greensboro and housing possibly the most squalid lavatories in town, it also reeks character. Despite being a somewhat seedy dive bar, it’s the regular haunt of a pretty broad mix of people that range all the way from college students and musicians to laid-back professionals. More often than not, this is the place to be during the week when other bars start winding down since things really just start getting going around midnight, particularly on Tuesday and Wednesday nights due to $1 domestic beers. Having the best foosball table in town with tournaments every other Sunday night also fosters a rather healthy foosball subculture (you definitely want the owner of the bar on your team as he has mad skills). And if you forget to bring your hazmat suit and the smoke starts getting to you, fortunately there’s a big, open patio.

Square One :: Greensboro’s independent music scene has seen its fair share of ups and downs over the decades, but always seems to manage to produce an eclectic array of original acts despite an overabundance of trendy dance clubs and professional cover bands. The venues for independent music have ranged from underground/illegal performance spaces (Trim Shop, Onion Cellar) to independent record stores (Gate City Noise) to neighborhood dive bars (College Hill Sundries) to proper clubs focusing on original music (The Flying Anvil). The common thread between these venues has been their support of local and national independent music and an ability to often book acts right as they are on the cusp of achieving international notoriety. Greensboro has seen the likes of then up and coming acts such as TV on the Radio, The Shins, The Avett Brothers, Of Montreal, Black Lips, Beirut, The Rosebuds, etc. (the list goes on and on) in insanely intimate settings. The latest venue in this tradition is a practice/performance space in the Glenwood neighborhood called Square One, which hosts several shows per month and has seen the likes of Beach House, Brightblack Morning Light, Dead Meadow, Love As Laughter, and King Khan & BBQ Show over the past year.

WQFS 90.9 FM (Guilford College) / WUAG 103.1 FM (UNC Greensboro) :: The only two presets in my car. If you’re in town on a Wednesday evening, be sure to check out our favorite radio show, J’s Indie/Rock Mayhem from 6-8pm on WQFS 90.9. This guy is pure energy, charming and will hit you over the head with some of today and yesterday’s best music (Animal Collective and the Happy Mondays back to back, hell yeah.)…never a dull moment with special on-air performances. Still in town Sunday night? Tune into WUAG 103.1 at 8pm for Radio Greensboro. This show features a different band playing live each week with q&a session, mainly locals with an occasional national coming through. David Row’s your man.

The Green Bean :: A cornerstone of the newly revitalized downtown, this coffeehouse offers a great selection of beer and wine and hosts a diverse range of local, regional and national talent. Early shows, usually over by 11pm, makes it the perfect stop on the way to other bars. Weekly trivia, monthly art exhibits, occasional movies, you get the idea. Mid-size, make-shift performance area, unique room. Friendly. Smoke free. Located in the heart of all the action. Norm McDonald was spotted there recently, not sure what that means.

The Dot Matrix Project / Harvey’s Kitchen :: Two entities giving Greensboro a web presence. The Dot Matrix Project hosts free monthly performances at the Green Burro (across from the Green Bean) showcasing local bands which are filmed, photographed and recorded on a volunteer basis. Always an event, bringing together the who’s who of the Gate City. Harvey Kent Robinson of Harvey’s Kitchen uses his kitchen as the performance/interview space for a number of local/regional bands, actors, DJs, writers, etc. Professionally filmed/edited, this site is helping catapult Greensboro into the national spotlight. The Harvey’s Kitchen series was also recently named by Paste Magazine’s website as one of the best websites for out-of-context concerts. Check it out.

Pizzeria L’Italiano :: This New York style pizzeria on Elm St. in downtown Greensboro serves up probably the best slices in town, but also offers some pretty hilarious people watching. On Friday and Saturday nights, the entertainment starts right around 2:00 AM since they stay open extra late (3:00 AM) to cater to all the hungry, drunken clubbers stumbling out of the various dance clubs on Elm St. The key is to get there a few minutes before 2:00 AM to beat the line running out the door, get a good seat, and watch the ’show.’

Download:
MP3: Citified :: Founded
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Amazon: Citified - Absence (EP)

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Follow AD on Twitter @aquadrunkard

Formed in 2006, Providence, RI trio The Low Anthem have provided the summer of 2009 with music that, while purposefully anachronistic, offers glimpses into the past, present and future like a great American novel.  Behind the air blowing through their ancient harmonium is a band who actually sees the music of the future as far more intimate. However, their music should not be viewed reductively as simply a new branch of folk music — it is, instead, more natural.  As such, it is quite fitting that they would use the name of histories  most famous naturalist, Charles Darwin, in the title of their Nonesuch Records debut.

From a the back of a van barreling down the autobahn in Germany, singer/guitarist/writer Ben Knox-Miller offered glimpses of the natural history of The Low Anthem and on the making of Oh My God, Charlie Darwin.

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Aquarium Drunkard: Ben, you are a visual artist.  Was that your first love?  How much of your artistic processing do you use in songwriting?

Ben Knox Miller: Painting was my second love. Baseball was my first. Music and painting have certain things in common. My favorite comparison is from Woody Guthrie: “A picture - you buy it once, and it bothers you for forty years; but with a song, you sing it out, and it soaks in people’s ears and they all jump up and down and sing it with you, and then when you quit singing it, it’s gone, and you get a job singing it again.”

AD: So much has been written about this album comparing it to “Dust Bowl” and all of these antediluvian references.  How do you see your music in terms of time?

BKM: It’s new, but it’s not plugged into current trends. We don’t really follow a lot of contemporary music.

AD: You and Jeff (Prystowsky, bassist/multi-instrumentalist) seem to communicate intrinsically.  Are the two of you on the same wavelength? Does he always play what you think the song needs?

BKM: Jeff always surprises me with new interpretations and possibilities. He has a wide-open mind about music, and rare and precious quality.

AD: “Charlie Darwin” laments being on a voyage and how even the brightest promise can be dimmed by directionlessness. Is this a metaphor for making a record in the age of rapid technology, or maybe even how we as Americans constantly ignore our past?

BKM: Listening to the record is akin to taking shelter during a lightning storm among nostalgic remnants in a water-damaged church, who’s new tenants - rats, owls, stray dogs and snakes - comprise a burgeoning, cacophonous, dog-eat-dog ecosystem.

AD: How did you and Jeff join forces originally?  What were those early shows like?  How did you learn to use the space and sparseness so effectively?  Where did you grab the rest of the band from?

BKM: We became friends in college (at Brown). We co-deejayed a free-form, graveyard shift jazz show. 2 - 5:30am. Spun records. We also played on a woodbat mens league team during the summers. We played some silly
shows in college. All very forgettable. Things did really pick up until we graduated and formed a trio with bluesman Dan Lefkowitz. He was dropping out of Bennington College and looking to join a band. The trio lasted 9 months and then reached it’s boiling point. Dan split. We played as a trio for another 6 months, then entered Jocie.

AD: Over the three songs, listeners hear the wide range of your dexterous voice.  By the time we learn that “The Horizon Is A Beltway“, you have glided through your falsetto and vulnerable middle range only to reveal a boisterous growling low.  Do you write in these voices or did the songs just draw this variety out of you?

BKM: Well said, the songs draw the variety out.

AD: So many of your songs are built on small repetitions?  Did you draw inspiration from stanzas of ancient poetry?  Your songs seem based in oral tradition, how much do you write down and how much just poured out you while playing?

BKM: I am getting more meticulous by the day. There is a fine line between spontaneity and laziness.

AD: Another tradition that is present is call-and-response.  Were you thinking about traditions when you were writing and recording? What was the primary inspiration?

BKM: Well, we all read “East of Eden” before the recording session. We had the books great word “timshel” taped above the control booth. It from ancient Hebrew meaning “though mayest.” We also had a copy of “The Origin of Species” close at hand always.

AD: I read that you included a bad review of your album in your press kit. That’s a little audacious.  Did you hope that the reader of your kit would counter those criticisms?

BKM: It was at once a scathing review and a rave. The guy couldn’t make up his mind. He called us the pinnacle of new folk and compared certain songs to Bush’s “shock and awe” military campaign; he said we dishonored Kerouac’s memory. I think it was fully emotional, irresponsible journalism. Fallout caused an epic 25 person thread our local Craigslist. It’s inclusion broke up the monotony of the hand-picked complementary quotes we’d listed. For anybody to care or be so emotional about our record was touching.

AD: How do react to an audience’s initial reaction to you?

BKM: Every night a battle is fought. New audiences are often the best, because they are suspicious, not preconditioned to enjoy. The risk of failure is essential to the immediacy and desperation that makes for a great live show.

AD: What led you to Nonesuch Records?  How adept were you at using all of the online services and finding the avenues for your music?

BKM: We were good at putting our music out there. We sold over 10,000 records before signing. We didn’t need Nonesuch, but we had such respect for their roster and David Bither (A&R). I don’t think there is a better label in the world.

AD: Was there one song in particular that you were most proud of on the new record?  Now that you are touring nationally and garnering critical huzzahs, are you planning the next record?  Are their new songs that you are playing and can’t wait to record?

BKM: My favorite song is “Ticket Taker.” We have lots of new material and are eager to record, if we ever get a break from the road. Even now, I’m writing from the back of the tour van on a German highway.

AD: Musically, there’s so much going on in your band.  How do you manage all of the pieces?  Do they actually fit together in different patterns (I’m thinking of how you reprise “to Ohio” and how I like to think “The Ticket Taker” is another facet of “Charlie Darwin’s”observation that ‘The way we trade our hard earned time for pay’)  Do you play a song the same way every night?

BKM: Our arrangements are ever-changing as are the instruments we take with us on the road. We try hard to keep it that way. Always trying to be in the state of discovery, rather than self-imitation.

AD: What are you listening to and reading these days?  Since your album is an exploration of America, are you exploring the country in your time off in all of these places.  How do you see Americana music today, especially since you come from a huge scene for it in Providence?

BKM: There is some great music coming out of Providence. It’s a creative town. This “Americana music” tag is a slippery fish. I’m not sure what it means. All I know is that I love song craft. And I’m discouraged with the movement away from content in current songwriting trends. People are singing in ways now that bury the lyrics. There are some great artists doing this, but I’m nostalgic for the poetic and narrative writing of Dylan, Cohen, Waits, etc.  words/ mik davis

Download:
MP3: The Low Anthem :: Charles Darwin
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Amazon: The Low Anthem - Oh My God, Charles Darwin

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With reissues, a box set and vinyl all hitting shelves this year it’s a good time to be a Big Star fan, if albeit, a somewhat confusing one.  A quick wrap-up: Two weeks ago saw the release of the long-standing double CD version of the #1 Record/Radio City LPs.  The music contained within is obviously A+, but the presentation is once again lacking in that 24 tracks is a lot to make it through on a single disc. (tip: just break the two LPs up in iTunes, rename them, and add a jpg of the original album artwork)  As for the two bonus tracks on this edition, by my count the single edit of “Oh My Soul” is the only one previously unavailable, as the single version of “In The Street” was most recently included on the 2008 Thank You Friends: The Ardent Records Story compilation.  So, if you already had the disc, this release isn’t really all that revelatory; what is though, are the long awaited Big Star vinyl reissues that dropped the same day and news of the four disc Big Star box set, entitled Keep An Eye On The Sky, due out September 15th.

Pitchfork Media reports that the set icludes “unreleased demos and alternate versions of the band’s classics, (as well as) solo material from frontmen Alex Chilton and Chris Bell as well as music from Chilton and Bell’s pre-Big Star bands Icewater and Rock City. The fourth CD is given over entirely to recordings of a 1973 hometown live stand, during which they covered T. Rex, Todd Rundgren, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and the Kinks. The band’s first two LPs, 1972’s #1 Record and 1974’s Radio City, appear in their original running order, but the box set mixes up album tracks with unreleased mixes.”

File the following under interesting Big Star curios. The Big Star tribute compilation Big Star, Small World was originally slated for release in 1998 but, due to the original label going under, did not see the light of day until 2006.  This is no more readily apparent than from a quick glance at the artist lineup: Afghan Whigs, The Gin Blossoms, Julian Hatfield, Teenage Fanclub, Whiskeytown, Wilco, Matthew Sweet, The Posies, etc.  About half of the covers included are worth hearing, especially if you had an interest in late ’90s power-pop/Americana, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see an all new, revamped, ’00s tribute to the seminal group in the next couple of years.

Download:
MP3: Wilco :: Thirteen (Big Star cover)
MP3: Matthew Sweet :: Ballad of El Goodo (Big Star cover)
MP3: Whiskeytown :: Give Me Another Chance (Big Star cover)
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Amazon: Big Star, Small World - Big Star Tribute

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Tonight in LA at the Troubadour in West Hollywood: John Vanderslice & The Tallest Man On Earth.  Come on out.  Photo by: Elizabeth Weinberg

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(Sevens, a recurring feature on Aquarium Drunkard, pays tribute to the art of the individual song.)

We spend a lot of time discussing the elements of the music that moves us, whether it’s lyrics or instrumentation. However, at a certain point, there is an ineffable quality about the music we like that affects us in ways we cannot describe. One of the musical structures that is often hardest to describe is the idea of resolution. You don’t have to know anything about how music is structured to feel and hear resolution, but you may be hard pressed to describe it once you do. Long story short, resolution is the perceived ‘need’ that a listener has for a note or chord “to move from a dissonance (an unstable sound) to a consonance (a more final or stable sounding one).” It’s something we often hear, but cannot always describe.

No one would ever accuse Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen of not being a smart musician, but it’s always exciting to hear the ‘low art’ of pop music making use of a truly classical tool. “Surrender,” arguably Cheap Trick’s most well known song, uses resolution to hook listeners as it shifts from verse to chorus to pre-verse and back to the verse. My first few times really listening to “Surrender” were a bit disjointed. The song builds through its parts, not providing any sort of resolution until the 3:08 mark. The chords that are played at this point provide a connection between choruses that had been denied by the pre-verse.

It’s this use of resolution that begs for listeners to keep their ear to the song, and when the solution to the song’s discordant puzzle is finally offered, it’s like a burden being lifted. It leaves the listener hooked and eager to be taken through the blows again. The song’s addictive chorus doesn’t hurt, but truly it’s something deeper that makes the song worth returning to again and again. Good one, Rick.  words/ j. neas

Download:
MP3: Cheap Trick :: Surrender
MP3: Cheap Trick :: Surrender (outtake)
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Amazon: Cheap Trick - Heaven Tonight

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Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XM, channel 26 (SIRIUS), and channel 43 (XM), can now be heard twice, every Friday - Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST. Below is this week’s playlist.

SIRIUS 100: Jean Michel Bernard - Generique Stephane ++ Neutral Milk Hotel - Glue (Gerbils cover) ++ Modern Skirts - Indiana Indian ++ Foreign Born - That Old Sun ++ Venice Is Sinking - Ryan’s Song ++ Red Red Meat - Rosewood, Stax, Volts And Glitter ++ Guided By Voices - Don’t Stop Now ++ The Drones - The Minotaur ++ The Strange Boys - Woe Is You And Me ++ Local Natives - Airplanes ++ Chad VanGaalen - Flower Gardens ++ Deerhunter - Little Kids ++ Grizzly Bear - Cheerleader ++ Dirty Projectors & David Byrne - Knotty Pine ++ Dump - When You Were Mine ++ Of Montreal - Faberge Falls For Shuggie ++ Amnion - Here Goes Nothing ++ Frankel - Anonymity Is The New Fame ++ Alex Chilton - Don’t Worry Baby ++ The Flaming Lips - The Spiderbite Song ++ The Deepest Blue - Somebody’s Girl ++ Sea-ders - Thanks A Lot ++ Sonic Youth - Thunderclap (For Bobby Pyn) ++ Pavement - Unseen Power of The Picket Fence ++ Yellow Fever - Donovan ++ The Glands - Livin’ Was Easy ++ Wilco - Car Can’t Escape ++ Ugly Cassanova - Hotcha Girls ++ TV On The Radio - Young Liars (Acoustic) ++ Five Eight - Suit of Sin ++ The Minutemen - History Lesson Pt 2 (acoustic) ++ The Minutemen - Felt Like A Gringo (acoustic) ++ Os Mutantes - Panis Et Circenes ++ Fiery Furnaces - The Philadelphia Grand Jury ++ Kelley Stoltz - Everything Begins ++ Shankar Jaikshan - Bombay Talkie ++ The Equals - Green Light ++ Circulatory System - Overjoyed ++ Talking Heads - Born Under Punches

*You can listen, for free, online with the SIRIUS three day trial — just submit an email address and they will send you a password.

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“Reckoning was a chance to turn up the volume, tear up the rule book, and instead capture R.E.M.’s on-stage mojo.” - Don Dixon (producer, Reckoning)

My relationship with Reckoning began roughly twenty years ago via a dubbed cassette copy I recorded off my friend’s older brother’s vinyl LP.  The flip side of the tape was Lifes Rich Pageant.  I still have the cassette, the sleeve’s paper yellowed and stained, with the track titles written in the hand of a 13 year old boy.  The red ink is a bit smeared and runs in places, and the cassette itself sounds a bit warped and thin.  It is seasoned in the way only an album that has been played hundreds of times, in hundreds of places, can be.  To say that my “getting into” R.E.M. at the beginning of my teenage years was revelatory would be an understatement.  This was, after all, the late eighties in suburban Atlanta.  Prior to this my musical diet primarily consisted of my parents record collection, whatever was on the radio, some Guns ‘n Roses (Appetite), Beastie Boys (Licensed To Ill), Run DMC (King of Rock) and select bargain bin finds like Zeppelin, and other ‘classic rock’ staples.  Looking back, IRS Records-era R.E.M. was an absolute gateway band.  It wasn’t long before my tastes expanded and I ditched the music of my parent’s generation (well, for a few years anyway) quickly getting my hands on everything I could find by the Pixies, Smiths, Devo, the Cure, and Violent Femmes.  The majority of this purloined by said friend’s older brother’s collection and dubbed to cassette.

Lately I’ve been listening to, and thinking about, early R.E.M. quite a bit; partly in response to this latest batch of reissues.  Besides the obvious classic rock touchtsones (Beatles, Stones, etc) there are not many albums/artists that I still consistently listen to that I discovered at age 13.  For example, those Dead Milkmen tapes I bought at Turtles Records & Tapes in Dunwoody Village, as nostalgia inducing as they may be, rarely get broken out.  Same goes for The Hoodoo Gurus and that first Lenny Kravitz record.  But album’s like Reckoning are different.  Album’s like Reckoning — well, they are truly works of art.  And like any art form you develop a connection with, whether a painting or film, it can be taken in again and again.  And like all good art, you take something different away from it each time, in every different circumstance you find yourself listening.  The tell-tale sign of a classic if there ever was one.

And what to say about the actual contents of Reckoning?  Like Murmur before it, it’s the sound of a young R.E.M. all covered in southern humidity, kudzu and innocence — mumbled vocals, indiscernible lyrics, and ringing Rickenbacker’s — in essence, a perfect R.E.M. album.  It is 1:03 a.m. as I type this and, coincidently, I am boarding a flight from LAX to Athens, GA in the morning for Athfest 2009…and as Stipe sings “It’s been pretty simple so far, vacation in Athens is calling me.”

Reissue Specs: The two-CD deluxe edition of Reckoning features the original album remastered plus a bonus disc of a previously unreleased concert recorded during the band’s Little America tour at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom on July 7, 1984 and broadcast on WXRT. On the Deluxe Edition’s bonus disc, the group performs eight of Reckoning’s ten songs, “Gardening At Night” from 1982’s Chronic Town EP and “Radio Free Europe,” “9-9″ and “Sitting Still” from Murmur but also new songs that had yet to make it onto tape: “Driver 8″ would later debut on R.E.M.’s third album and “Hyena” on its fourth.

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Amazon: R.E.M. - Reckoning (Deluxe Edition)

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Pavement :: Unseen Power of The Picket Fence

“Time After Time Was My Least Favorite Song…” - Unseen Power of the Picket Fence

One of my favorite takeaways from the 33 1/3 installment on R.E.M.’s debut, Murmur, was author J. Niimi’s acute acknowledgment of Michael Stipe’s non-linear lyrics, lyrical style and delivery; and how they shaped the next generation of musicians in a genre that would become known as “indie rock” - - in particular, Pavement.  This struck a chord, as when I first discovered Pavement, one of the immediate touchstones was that of Stephen Malkmus’ pointedly casual delivery, and his abstract use of lyrics cloaked in, what to these ears felt like, Stipe-isms. I was hooked. More than hooked, actually.

Like Stipe before him, Malkmus has, throughout the progression of his career, moved on to more straightforward lyrical songwriting, and while I’m still an enormous fan, there is something special about the days (of both bands) when you had little clue about what the vocals were trying to impart, or hell, for that matter, even (at times) what the actual words were. I’ve gracefully mumbled my way through many an R.E.M. & Pavement tune, only to years later realize I was completely off base, both lyrically and content wise.

Here is Pavement’s ode to R.E.M., “Unseen Power of the Picket Fence,” in which Malkmus, working his way through Reckoning’s song titles, informs us that “Time After Time Was (his) Least Favorite Song.” FYI, “Picket Fence” can now be found on the Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain reissue.

Download:
MP3: Pavement :: Unseen Power Of The Picket Fence
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Amazon: J. Niimi - R.E.M.’s Murmur (33 1/3)

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